On October 21, the HSE Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities hosted a lecture entitled ‘Classics in the Modern Age: Online Opera Fans Battle for the Enigmatic Russian Soul’. Delivered by Emily Erken, Lecturer of Musicology at The Ohio State University’s School of Music, her lecture covered the peculiarities of Runet contributors in their reactions to contemporary productions of classic operas. Among other topics, her lecture addressed how Russians today are seeking to rethink the moral identity of the country in which they live and how representatives from a number of cultural groups present their current views as a natural development of the national heritage.
Stefan Helmreich, Professor and Elting E. Morison Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be at HSE Moscow and HSE St Petersburg from September 25 – October 4, 2016 to deliver a series of lectures and lead a discussion on the politics of contemporary ocean science. He will also take part in the round table 'Soundscape in the Anthropology of Science and Art' during the Days of Ethnographic Cinema festival organized by the HSE School of Cultural Studies.
From September 23 to October 2, the HSE School of Philology (Faculty of Humanities) will host Susanna Witt, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University (Sweden). During this time she will lecture at a conference on World Literature as a Soviet Project, as well as teach several lectures in the School of Philology.
What causes variation between languages, and what do they have in common? How is language embedded in our general cognitive system? These are some of the questions that Eric Reuland, Faculty Professor of Language and Cognition at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (OTS) (Utrecht University), will address in a lecture course entitled ‘Syntactic approaches to anaphora’ that will be held at HSE Moscow from September 12 till 22, 2016. Professor Reuland recently spoke with the HSE news service about his research interests, his upcoming visit to Moscow, and some books he recommends for those interested in gaining exposure to the field of linguistics.
Professor Peter Anstey from the University of Sydney held a series of seminars on research methods in the humanities and early modern philosophy at HSE Moscow last week. The seminars were connected to his project ‘The Nature and Status of Principles in Early Modern Philosophy’. How have the studies of philosophy evolved? What is the role of philosophy of the modern world? How can Russian students become involved in global research projects? These were some of the issues Peter Anstey talked about with HSE News Service.
From November 14 - 24th a series of lectures on 'Diversity and Uniformity in Linguistic Sound Systems' by Ian Maddieson, Adjunct Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of California was held at the HSE School of Linguistics. The course was dedicated to the phonetic diversity of languages and included eight lectures. During the series, Professor Maddieson talked to HSE English News Editor, Anna Chernyakhovskaya’s questions about his research into the relations between language and environment.
Honorary Professor at the University of Chicago and Sydney University, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick gave a lecture on Stalin and Post-War Anti-Semitism in the USSR at the HSE’s International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences on Thursday 22nd October. In her talk, Professor Fitzpatrick looks at anti-semitism as a bone of contention between Stalin and his closest colleagues in the years when challenging the leader could have life-threatening consequence. As she explained in an interview with the HSE English News website, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s interest in the ‘Jewish question’ came out of her latest book.
One of the founders of formal semantics, Professor Barbara Partee of the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently celebrated an anniversary at the Higher School of Economics. For approximately 20 years, she has been teaching at various universities in Russia. This year, she took part in the Summer School on Pronouns: Syntax, Semantics, Processing, which was organized by the School of Linguistics at HSE. Professor Partee recently spoke with the HSE news service about why she considers the linguistics programme at HSE to be one of the best in Russia, as well as about the differences she sees between Russian and American students.
On 1st to 3rd June, the remarkable Italian historian and one of the founders of microhistory, Carlo Ginzburg will give a series of open lectures at the HSE. Professor Ginzburg has been invited to Moscow by the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI). His translator, Professor at the School of Philosophy, Sergey Kozlov spoke to the HSE News Service about how he was inspired to translate Ginzburg’s work into Russian which led to them becoming firm friends.
On May 15, Dr James Canton of the University of Essex will deliver a lecture at HSE on ‘Wild Writing’, a form of literature that emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a novel way of understanding the urban landscape and nature. The author of numerous publications focused primarily on British travel writing in Arabia, Dr Canton’s lecture will focus on a discussion of local Essex landscapes.
